


Company

by BridgeToTheSky



Category: RWBY
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Fluff and Angst, cuddling to keep the anxiety away, jaune doesnt get enough love take this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-04-03 20:19:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14003937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BridgeToTheSky/pseuds/BridgeToTheSky
Summary: Anxiety-ridden, fear-ridden Jaune seeks solace with you, and finds himself a little less miserable in your arms.Fluff, angst, fluff~Takes place Vol. 3, 4, and maybe 5?





	Company

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah I'm alive and dying to have SOMETHING finished goddamn. So here's this! Something I've been working on on and off and yeah not sure if I'm happy with it? 99% sure it's a oneshot and will have nothing else connected to it but hey there's still that one %
> 
> Comments/reviews are heavily encouraged.

It had started out so casually.

Jaune remembers the first time he ever asked — a quiet evening, he had been tired, everyone he would’ve asked either training or tending to some other matter he was left unaware of — and …

You were there.

He remembers swallowing a huge lump in his throat, one that always seemed to be there.

“H—Hey, (Y/n?)”

You had turned over in bed, hair messy and obscuring your face somewhat.

“Can I … would it be okay if I slept in your bed? With — with you?”

Your mouth had only opened a mere inch before he had gone on what could only be described as a tangent — how he doesn’t _mean it in **that** way_ and how he’s _very **far** from a pervert_ and if you _just want him to sleep as **far away** from you as possible that’s completely workable_ and —

“Sure.”

He remembers all his words dying away. He had not prepared for this. He had mentally and physically prepared for screaming and slaps in the face, for kicks to the groin and everything else he had categorized as “the very worse that could happen.”

Not … acquiescence. No, he hadn’t known what to do with that.

You had thrown the covers back nonchalantly, waiting for him to slide in, and he had. In a sort of awed daze, he climbed into your bed, flinching his fingers away any time they came to close to your person, desperately cautious not to touch you.

“You can put your hand around me or something if it helps you to remember someone’s with you.”

Moments of silenced had stretched, simply because Jaune didn’t know how to fill them.

He did only what you said was okay to do, and fell asleep with you as the sun sank behind the mountains.

He could have cried — and maybe he had cried, a tear here or there, at just how … how you understood.

 

~*~*~

And that was how it started.

After, he tries to find the most opportune times to sneak away, find some solace with you — his new guardian angel who doesn’t ask nearly as many questions as, maybe, you should.

But Jaune Arc is the sole _antithesis_ of smooth (unless danger calls,) and the rest of team JNPR notices.

Ren corners him one day.

“Uh, Jaune …?” he starts off apprehensively.

Jaune looks up from his spaghetti already knowing he looks more than guilty of _something_.

Nora is looking from Jaune to Ren, from Ren to Jaune, and back again, expectant. Ren, himself, looks tentative, as though he already knows he is fast-approaching a conversation he probably doesn’t want to have.

“You’ve … been going into (Y/n)’s dorm a lot — when there’s no one else around —”

Nora gasps dramatically, hand-on-mouth and all —

“—and we were wondering —”

“There’s nothing going on!” Jaune blurts out, almost knocking himself over from standing up so fast. Others in the dining hall glance at him before turning away. _Freak_. “It’s just — she — (Y/n), she — she helps me with things.”

“With … things?”

There is a pink tint to Ren and Nora’s cheeks that tells Jaune he needs to elaborate, and fast, before word spreads and he finds himself kicked out of the academy he knows he doesn’t deserve to be in.

“Hehe, yeah! Studying, and — and hand-to-hand combat, and — and she’s surprisingly good with swords,” Jaune feels himself ramble but can’t stop. “You know that? Huh? Did you know that, Ren?”

“I did!” Nora piques.

“Uh, no, I … I didn’t know, but thanks for letting us know,” Ren says.

Jaune sees Ren look over his corner and the chatter stops immediately.

“Hello, everyone~”

Jaune looks to his side, delighted. “Pyrrha!

Pyrrha sits beside Jaune and, thank the gods, all talk of you dissipates. Elaboration is the antithesis of all lies and the only times you’ve touched him have been to soothe demons, not to help him fight his own.

~*~*~

 

Jaune doesn’t really know why he doesn’t tell anyone else about the … _thing_ he has with you. But he finds that the biggest reason is that he doesn’t want anyone getting the wrong idea — about you or this. No, that’s the _last_ thing he wants.

And it’s also … not the easiest thing to explain. To anyone, let alone himself.

~*~*~

At first, it’s just spooning (sometimes he’s the big spoon, sometimes you are; Jaune finds his spirits lifting either way). Harmless -- mostly is hands-intertwining silently in the night when no one really feels the need to explain anything. But …

One night, you turn over and press your head into his chest.

“(Y/n) …?” Jaune whispers. He doesn’t know if he’s dreaming but that seems much more plausible than this.

Slowly, he embraces you, pulling you even closer into him. Legs intertwine and he can hardly describe what’s he’s feeling.

No, he can’t describe what he’s feeling.

“Is this okay …?” You ask softly, your breath bouncing off the bit of exposed skin that conceals Jaune’s collarbone.

He takes a moment to compose himself. “Yeah — yeah, of course, it is …”

He rests beside you, relaxing into the embrace.

Maybe he’s been wrong.

Maybe you’ve needed this, too.

~*~*~

 

It’s worse — it’s a thousand times worse — after battles, after close calls. Even after training sessions where he drops his sword, or doesn’t bring his shield up soon enough, or trips or misses an opportunity to dodge. All his cuts and bruises and scratches — things Jaune used to think would make him feel more manly — are simply reminders of what he couldn’t do. Times when he just feels so … so …

He has searched for words to describe how little he feels at times, how hilariously minuscule, and hasn’t found any.

He breaths _‘thank-yous’_ into your ear when you receive him, peppering soft kisses against his jawline or toying idly with strands of his hair. When you don’t ask questions. Nights melt into days, and days into nights (because, at this point, he has taken up with you during the daytime, too, sometimes).

“Gods, Jaune, your eye …” You say, wincing as he does when your fingers come into contact with the malcontent skin.

Jaune flinches away, his gaze lowering. “It’s nothing.”

“But —”

“Can we just … not talk about it?”

He hopes he doesn’t sound too curt with you because he truly — truly — doesn’t mean it. But he also needs you to not notice how small he looks with this bruise, with all the time.

 _Small_.

~*~*~

 

The irony.

The worse night of his night arrives, and he doesn’t come to you.

The night Pyrrha is killed.

Not a visit, not a scroll call, nothing; because he knows it will be for naught because the last things he wants is gentleness and to be gentle. Rage, _war_ boils in his blood, thrumming underneath his skin.

He doesn’t accept it. He denies it. He sees himself fight everyone and everything on the surface of Remnant and below it and above it and -

Pyrrha is still gone.

And then, finally, when he can no longer torment himself —

You open your front door, and there he is, clothes and hair soaked with rain, eyes unblinking in their misery.

He leans forward and you catch him and with the final lightning strike of that night, he comes apart in your arms.

~*~*~

The world is scarier now; Beacon is in shambles and the world feels like it is in even worse shape with every demolished town he and Ruby and what remains of team JNPR encounter. At night he imagines the footsteps of grim just outside of the campsite, ones smart enough to kill them in their sleep, ones strong enough that they have no chance.

None at all.

Even though nothing is ever there, Jaune’s reflexes never seem fast enough — that scares him.

So he stays up late — later than he’s ever allowed himself — and, with Pyrrha’s guidance, enhances himself, does what he can, until he collapses from exhaustion.

On the last night he does this, he is panting, his lungs feel as though they are about to collapse bone by bone into his stomach when arms come around him.

He closes his eyes and almost waits for the inevitable attack when he realizes just how familiar the hands are around him.

“Come on,” it is your voice. “Let’s go to bed.”

Jaune finds that he is too tired, and a little too soothed by your embrace, to argue with you.

He lets you settle him into his sleeping bag, and you slip in with him. Jaune wants to ask if it's alright if you’re comfortable with everyone, y’know, knowing about that, but your actions already answer him.

“Thanks,” Jaune says, lips next to yours when you don’t turn the lamp off.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeaaah this ends very abruptly but I didn't know what else to do with it, and at the time wanted to share it with you all. Sooo~ Comments still very much welcome! Hope you enjoyed!
> 
> Jaune is a treasure pass it on.


End file.
